Georgetown Time Machine: Hippies

Today for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m investigating an amusing series of photos from the DC Historical Society. They come from their Emil Press collection, which I’ve featured before. These particular photos are labeled simply “‘Hippies’ in Georgetown”. They appear to have been taken in May 1967.

The first photo, above, shows a couple of gents walking by the National Bank of Washington, which used to occupy the northwest corner of Wisconsin and M. The facade looks different now, but you can see from this older photo that that is how the south side used to look like:

Of course the next question is: are these really hippies?

I’m not expert, but I’d probably agree the tall guy on the right qualifies, but I don’t think I’d call the other guy a hippy if he weren’t next to Mr. Leather Fringed Boots.

The next group of hippies is standing in front of 3279 M St. I believe the buildings they’re standing in front of were demolished for the Eton Court development. It looks like a diner on the left, an interior decorating shop in the middle, and some other restaurant on the right.

But to the more important question: are these guys hippies too?

I was going to call the guy on the left a borderline case, but then I saw that he’s barefoot. So definitely a hippy there. The other guys a bit shaggy and sporting cool shades, so I’ll grant him hippy status too, if not just because he’s hanging out with a barefoot guy, and that’s pretty standard hippy behavior.

The last photo gives a bit of a more intriguing hint of what’s going on. It’s a hippy looking guy (of the collegiate sort) giving an interview in front of the old Little Tavern burger shop at N and Wisconsin. He’s surrounded by a couple more hippy looking people with at least one police officer looking on. For a moment I wondered if the date of the photo wasn’t wrong and this was part of the May Day anti-Vietnam War protests. But looking at photos from that day, it just feels like a different year and a different occassion:

Photo by Washington Area Spark.

So I would guess this was some other protest, which seemed to be happening a lot that month: